Killer Feature
66 / wfmag.ccTony Hawk’s Pro Skater 320 years since the first game was released: an apt
time to talk about the third entry’s killer featureindsight is a luxury, but the context it offers
can bring about some fun little realisations.
Now the Tony Hawk’s series is long-dead (THPS5
never happened), we can reflect and not worry
about what’s next, what changes will happen,
what tweaks to the formula will occur. Actually, that’s quite
sad at the same time. But I digress: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3
is, with the benefit of hindsight, the most exciting point in the
series’ history.
The first game was revelatory, the
second had the finest soundtrack of any
game ever made, but it was the third
game where those solid, compulsive
mechanics were introduced that made
this a competitive player’s dream. If you
know, you know. If you don’t: I’m talking
about reverts. That is to say, pivoting your stance on landing
from a jump or drop in order to switch your dominant footing
on the board, be that left or right-sided. That sounds awful
and boring, of course, but hey – would you believe it was much
more than that?
Reverts in THPS3 could be chained with manuals (balancing
on the front or back two wheels while still being in motion),
and when you did this, the combo you had been building up
just before landing did not end. Manuals were introduced in
the second game, but the simple act of adding and allowing
you to chain reverts into manuals meant combos – and soscores – were now feasibly unlimited in scope. That’s how to
add something of value to a yearly update.
Neversoft had seen what made the Tony Hawk’s
games successful so far – a fiercely competitive local
multiplayer mode. A room with a bunch of people in it
all taking their turn to better each other across a few
different modes. The one constant? It was all about
the score. The contributing factor to scores? Combos.
Whoever took that knowledge and decided to add in revert-
to-manuals as a combo extension
deserves the highest honour gaming
is able to bestow (probably a furry
badge with the Wireframe logo on it),
because whoever had that idea made
the Tony Hawk’s series one of the
best multiplayer games of the early
noughties. Not to go too old man on you whipper-snappers,
but that thrill of face-to-face competition – not the band, they
weren’t on the soundtrack – is a thrill no amount of superb
online multiplayer games can beat.
The Tony Hawk’s series would have been absolutely fine
had it continued the way it was heading. Uninspiring, maybe.
Perhaps it would have expedited the series’ plummet toward
the likes of Ride and Robomodo’s other execrable entries to
the series, I can’t say for sure. But with the benefit of our good
friend hindsight, I can say it was the addition of reverts in Tony
Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 that made a great series transcendent.H
“Whoever had that idea made
the Tony Hawk’s series one of
the best multiplayer games
of the early noughties”NEVERSOFT / 2001 / PS2, GC, XBOX, PC, MULTITony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3